Design Thinking Pedagogy: Tools and Strategies for Engaged Learning

Faculty and students have diversified and refined design thinking over recent decades, and more institutions are using it in the development of transformative learning experiences. The first of its kind, this study examines the potential outcomes of design thinking educational workshops, through which students learn and practice design thinking methods. Tailored for the promotion of each course’s learning objectives, these sessions cover a diverse range of topics and skills. We build upon existing research, backed by over two decades of design thinking literature and five years of data from a university center for design thinking, to share teaching strategies and classroom practices that foster engaged learning. Through a mixed-methods design, this article explores data collected through five years of short-form design thinking “workshop” sessions. We sourced this data from 971 sessions and represents 7,400 individuals’ responses for a short survey provided at the end of each session. Findings are compared to research on high impact learning practices for supporting engaged learning environments. Comparative analysis shows that design thinking learning strategies consistently fostered engaged learning environments. From this comparative analysis, we analyzed the various design thinking learning strategies that participants felt were most valuable. Beyond the analysis, this paper will also present the most highly valued pedagogical tools used in these sessions for readers interested in implementing them in a classroom setting.